HIGH PRODUCTION

Evening Post, Volume CXII, Issue 59, 7 September 1926, Page 19

HIGH PRODUCTION

THE AMERICAN CO3IPARISON.

There are especial dangers lurking j n the path of industrial controversy (writes "J.L." to the "Manchester Guardian Commercial"). Take, for example, the claims for "High wages and high productivity." At once, let it be said, it is. an attractive theory. We are all agreed that we should like to reduce the total cost of production and to increase the individual- rewards of production. But to leap from that basis of agreement to the acceptance of the theory that modem American methods are to be imitated everywhere is an altogether different story. If we are to discover a science of industrial administration it must apply itself first and foremost to the discovery of all the facts. To say that in the United States there is higher payment than m England and that more production results is to forget that there are many differing circumstances. To begin with, we have struggled in Jingland to safeguard industry against inflicting evils on the individual. We have, as a basis, old-age pensions, health insurance, unemployment insurance. Nor are we prepared to go so far as to say that only efficients should be employed and even efficients only so long as they are fully efficient. Here again we are face to face with widely differing circumstances. There does seem to be a place in American industry for those whose services are released from tho direct productivity of industry. This is an aspect which has. never been cousidered. While it is true that in the direct production men get big wages, it is also true that they leave direct production and get smaller wages. Then again, the fact that the United States is a continent is a factor. Consumption demand is bound to be on a higher level where there is a vast continent not separated by language, or race, or tariff, and especially so when of all the populations in the world that population is the most remarkable for its increasing personal needs. It is in the spirit of the student that we shall do well to consider American methods, remembering that American methods work under American and under no other conditions. It is not easy to distinguish those conditions, but until wo do distinguish them we shall go wrong in our deductions..